


Villains In My Head

by intergalacticdragons



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Trespasser Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 04:14:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4905103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intergalacticdragons/pseuds/intergalacticdragons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She dreams of him. She knows what comes next, and she dreams of him anyway, of what could have been, and of the echoes of what had already come to pass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Villains In My Head

**Author's Note:**

> Alright! Quick background info: I live in a world where the other possible Quizzie's all somehow survived to tell the tale about how they eventually ended up in the Inquisition. Miss Lavellan here was sent by her clan as a spy (you know, the usual), fell for Solas, so on so forth. 
> 
> This is written with the canon in mind.
> 
> (Title from Control by Halsey, last line from Gasoline by Halsey. Thank you Halsey.)

Her feet are bare against the ground. The grass is wet with morning dew, and the sky is still just starting to brighten, and the air around her is humid but not near warm enough for it to be stifling. Her skirts trail along behind her, dragging against the grass and shimmering in the early morning light, heavy and light all at once. Her fingers move over flower buds that haven’t bloomed yet, damp and sticky like the grass that curls between her toes. She turns her head to look over her shoulder, and a smile curls across bare brown lips, and she pulls the skirts up to her chest to free her legs, and she takes off at a run. 

The white silks and sheer fabrics she’s dressed in fly around her, and her hair – a deep brown color – is flying back and away from her face and pointed ears. She looks almost wild except for the enchanted flowers that rest around her head, rich colors complimenting the tan shade of her skin, the midnight blue tint to her eyes, the freckles that are only slightly darker than her skin. 

She laughs when she looks over her shoulder again, watching her pursuer following after her at a more leisurely pace. She stops only after she’s reached the edge of the forest around them, the bushes of flowers she’d been touching at the other side where a path had led them to the clearing. She turns and kneels in the grass, the dress fanning out in an almost perfect circle around her, and she extends her arms. 

A great white wolf sits several feet in front of her and stares at her for a long several moments. She watches him as he stands and starts walking again, and there is a shift of the magic in the air as the wolf changes into someone dressed in dark fabrics but gilded armor, hammered thin but strong to emphasize his strength. He kneels before her and takes her hands in his before kissing them ever so gently. 

She lets out the softest of sighs and tilts her head, feeling the crown of flowers around her head slip the slightest bit. His eyes catch the movement and he moves closer to her to tilt her head back to its upright position. His fingers move over the slope of her cheeks, thumbs along her jaw line, and her eyes slip shut when his hands move into her hair. He fixes the flowers until they are covering her hairline, her ears on the outside to help secure the circlet in place. 

Her eyes open again when his hands withdraw back to her face. His thumbs move over her cheeks, the fingertips of his left hand trace down her nose, the pointer finger of his left hand traces the outline of her lips, and then moves up to trace the curve of her eyes. They close under his attention, and then something sparks between his fingers and her lips part in a soft exhalation. 

_You are so beautiful_ , she hears, but it’s more of an echo than anything, and then he is kissing her and her hands are curling into the fabric of his armored tunic, pulling him closer to her until she is sure there is no space left between them. His hands are still on her face, holding her to him almost as desperately as he is holding her to him, and then something changes. 

He pulls away and his eyes, happy a moment ago, are weighed down and sad and haunted, and she can see her reflection in them. She can see the flowers around her head are wilting. She looks away from him and sees the setting change, and there is a pond and rock walls covered in beautiful vines. 

_This isn’t real_ , she says, but that isn’t anything more than an echo, either. 

_I can’t_ , he says, and those words reverberate through her head – _I can’t, I can’t_ , and then _ar lasa mala revas_ \- at the same moment she hears _That is a matter best left for when you wake_ , and then _Sleep well?_ followed closely by _I am sorry, the kiss was…Ar lath ma, vhenan, I can’t_ …

She squeezes her eyes shut and pulls away from him, rising her to feet and pressing the heels of her hands – laced in bracers and gloves meant for her archery whereas before they were bare – to her eyes, trying to burn something from her vision, but she can’t recall what. 

She pulls her hands away and finds he is gone, and there is an odd sense of relief that goes with that. But then the scenery changes again, and she’s in some lost temple dedicated to the god she’d been brought up to believe evil and not to be trusted, and an echo of her most favorite Hah’ren’s voice floats through her mind: _May the Dread Wolf never catch your scent, da’len, for if he does, destruction may follow you wherever you go._

But there are murals showing her the Dread Wolf and she touches them, right where his hand is extended outwards towards a slave’s face, right where his magic pulls the markings free from his cheeks and forehead, right where she knows his hand has been before, and she hears a friend’s voice as if from a great distance. _I don’t understand. Wasn’t the Dread Wolf supposed to be this great evil being?_

She doesn’t look away from the mural but presses her hand flat against it and shuts her eyes again, and when she looks up and down at herself, she finds she is dressed completely for war. Her leather and metal armor is heavy on her body, but it is so closely fit to her body it is not cumbersome, and her belt with her lock picking supplies and throwing knives is strapped tightly to her waist. Her bow is in her left hand, her quiver strapped across her back, but her right hand is pressed against the chest of him again. 

His eyes still look sad, still look weighed down, but there is a glimmer of hope in them, and when she looks for her reflection in his eyes again she finds a grim sort of determination written across her face, and she hears the echoing words again. _I will stop you. I will show you a different way. It doesn’t need to be like this. I can help you change the necessities. I can be there for you._

His smile, as sad as his eyes and as heavy as the pain there, curls across his face, and then she is kneeling in front of him again and he is only on one knee, one hand pressed against the curve of her jaw. He kisses her so hard and desperately she starts to cry, and when he pulls away she cries out and the noise is quickly swallowed by another echo. 

_Var lath vir suledin!_

_I wish it could, vhenan._

_Don’t you fucking leave me again!_

She hears another echo, so faint that she cannot make out what is said, and she turns her head to find its source. All at once, she is in another forest, vibrant and green and bright, and off in the distance she can see sparkling spires made of crystal rising above the tree line. She is still in her armor, her bow is still in her left hand, and she stares at the sparkling spires for several moments before she turns again to find the great white wolf standing at the other side of the clearing. 

The distance feels endless between them. 

She lifts the bow and reaches back for an arrow, pulls it free, notches it, and draws it back. She aims for the spot directly between the wolf’s sad six eyes, her face unmovable as she thinks about what she is about to do.

She aims the bow directly into the sky and looses the arrow. 

She sees the wolf cock his head in surprise and curiosity, and then she tosses the bow aside before tearing her belt off of her body and throwing it away with the bow. The quiver goes next, and then she starts at her armor and tears at it until she is left in nothing but a loose shirt and her leather breeches, her feet bare against dew covered grass again, her hands uncovered and her hair unbound. 

The wolf takes one step towards her, but glances up at the sky and shakes his head. He sits back on his hind legs, tilts his head back, and howls, and it’s the first real sound she’s heard since she was running in silks and sheer fabrics with love heavy in her heart. 

She wakes on a bedroll and stares down at her hands for several long moments, trying to recover her thoughts. Beside her, her human mage friend turns over and looks up at her with sad brown eyes, and beside her rests the mage’s brother, one arm missing at the elbow, a woman already pulling herself into armor kneeling next to him. 

She looks away from them all and stands, grabs just her bow and just her quiver, and makes off for the forest. There are no white sparkling spires above the tree line, and there is no love heavy in her heart. She is not dressed in silks and finery, and her hair is a ragged mess that she’s tried to keep clean but cannot seem to, and she finds that she doesn’t care about its state at the moment. 

She cares about the fact that beneath her feet, the grass is cool and damp, and the howl she’d heard in her dreams is echoing in her wakefulness and she knows what she is doing is dangerous and stupid but it has been time for her to find him for months now, and she knows that he will not like to see her, and she knows he will turn her away, but she will tell him of the crown of flowers she dreamed, and she will remind him of the slow arrow she’d fired in that memory of a clearing, and she will get to him somehow. 

She lifts her bow when she hears something scurrying through the forest, draws an arrow back, and waits until she sees the glint of an eye and fires the arrow. 

When she pulls the ram back from the forest is when she dons her armor, says her goodbyes, straps her belt around her waist, wraps her feet carefully, and leaves for the forest again. 

She finds him a month later, and before he can say anything, before he can turn her around or try to convince her that this isn’t actually happening, that this is just another encounter in the Fade, she says aloud so that her voice rings over the distance between them:

“You can’t wake up. This is not a dream.”

**Author's Note:**

> This _may_ or may not end up being multichaptered. For now I'm listing it as complete.


End file.
